[...]... Gottfried Hankwitz in the technique Later on, Jean Hellot (1685-1765) gave a meticulous description of the details and a long survey of the literature.[6] Figure 2.—Galley-oven, 1869 The picture is a cross section through the front of the oven showing one of the 36 retorts, the receivers for the distillate, and the space in the upper story used for evaporating the mixture of acid solution of calcium phosphate... respirable” part of air In the Méthode de Nomenclature Chimique of 1787, the column of “undecomposed substances” lists sulfur as the “radical sulfurique,” and phosphorus, correspondingly, as the “radical phosphorique.” The acids are now shown to be compounds of the “undecomposed” radicals, the complete reversion of the previous concept of this relationship A part of the old analogy remained as far as the acids... insight into the ways of nature can be expected from these efforts Not only is the story of phosphorus a major drama in the history of chemistry; it also illustrates, in a spectacular example, the growth of this science through the discovery of connections between apparently unrelated phenomena, and the continuous interplay between basic science and the search for practical usage The Author: Eduard Farber. .. characteristics was the analogy of phosphorus with sulfur Like sulfur, phosphorus can burn in two different ways, either slowly or more violently, and form two different acids The analogy can, therefore, be extended to explain the results in both groups in the same way In the process of burning, the combustible component is removed, and the acid originally combined with the combustible is set free Whether the analogy... fast-acting, powerful poisons The importance of phosphorus was gradually recognized and the means by which this took place are characteristic and similar to other developments in the history of science This paper was written in order to summarize these various means which led to the highly complex ways of present research The Element from Animals and Plants It was a little late to search for the philosophers’... point of view, a point of view which they helped to create The widespread interest in the burning of sulfur and of phosphorus, naturally, caught Lavoisier’s attention In his first volume o f Opuscules Physiques et Chimiques (1774), he devoted 20 pages to his experiments on phosphorus He amplified them a few years later[10] when he attributed the combustion to a combination of phosphorus with the “eminently... 1862, page 80 of volume 2, 2nd group, of P Bolley’s Handbuch der chemischen Technologie.) To obtain phosphorus, a good proportion of coal (regarded as a type of phlogiston) was added to urine, previously thickened by evaporation and preferably after putrefaction, and the mixture was heated to the highest attainable temperature It was obvious that phlogiston entered into the composition of the distillation... describe at a later time.” These thoughts went so far as to connect the new marvel with alchemical wonder tales When Marggraf used the “essential salt of urine,” also called sal microcosmicum, and admixed silver chloride (“horny silver”) to it for the distillation of phosphorus, he expected “a partial conversion of silver by phlogiston and the added fine vitrifiable earth, but no trace of a more noble metal... philosophical stone consisted in the preparation of urine, this man worked in all kinds of manners and for a very long time without finding anything Finally, in the year 1669, after a strong distillation of urine, he found in the recipient a luminant matter that has since been called phosphorus He showed it to some of his friends, among them Mister Kunkel [sic].”[1] Neither the name nor the phenomenon were really... mixtures, the conditions should never before 1669 have been right for the formation and the observation of phosphorus Figure 1. The alchemist discovers phosphorus A painting by Joseph Wright (1734-1779) of Derby, England For Brand’s contemporaries at least, the discovery was new and exciting The philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) considered it important enough to devote some of his .